"Do you think the figure, as you call it, could have been one of the servants in disguise?"
"I am certain it was not. Not one of them has that dark Italian face."
"Italian face!" echoed Mr. Ravensworth. "Why do you call it an Italian face?"
Lady Level bent her head. "The thought somehow struck me," she answered, after a pause. "Not at the time, but since. I fancied it not unlike the Italian faces that one sees in pictures."
"Was it a man or a woman?"
"I do not know. At the time I took it to be a man, quite young. But since, recalling the appearance—well, it seems to me that it is impossible to decide which it was."
"And you saw no signs of this mysterious figure afterwards?"
"None whatever. There were no traces, I tell you, of its having been there, except the injury to Lord Level, the knife, and the fallen candlestick. The candlestick may have been left in Lord Level's room the previous night, for it is precisely like those used in the household, so that the figure may have lighted it from the night-lamp."
Mr. Ravensworth could not make much of all this. It puzzled him. "The curious thing is," he said aloud, "where could the figure have come from?"
"The curious thing is, that Lord Level wants to persuade me now that this was only a dream of the imagination."